Next up is "The Invincible Iron Man," a six part featurette in which the writers and creators of the character including Stan Lee, John Romita Jr., Bob Layton, Warren Ellis, Adi Granov, and Marvel EIC Joe Quesada trace the character's evolution. For someone like myself who has a good amount of knowledge of the character I still learned some things. A more knowledgeable fan might look upon this with nostalgia, and for the average movie-goer who might not know anything this is a great tutorial.
"Wired: The Visual Effects of Iron Man" gives more info about the special effects and the armor itself and gives more detail about the computer art talked briefly in "I Am Iron Man".
For the aspiring actor or anyone just interested in the acting process you can see Robert Downey Jr’s. screen test and a rehearsal clip of Downey Jr. and Bridges working out a scene with Favreau. Here you can see how the character evolved and the actor’s thought processes, and see some lines that were cut from the final print of the film.
There’s also a short story from The Onion News Network, about the adaptation of the Iron Man trailer into a feature-length film which is pretty funny.
Rounding out the extras is a variety of image galleries, with concept art, tech, unit photography and posters.
Even the packaging is pretty cool. In the film Tony has glowing arc-reactor to prevent shrapnel from entering his heart and keep him alive. The packaging has a slipcover with Iron Man on the cover with the glow reactor prominently displayed. Once you take the slipcover off, the DVD case has Tony Stark and the glow reactor still displayed, which is a nice little nod to the character.
After all that there’s just one thing missing – a commentary by Favreau and Downey Jr. While all the extras are quite interesting, I would have loved to hear their thoughts on the completed film itself.
Iron Man is a great movie that definitely leaves you wanting more and luckily Iron Man 2 & 3 have been announced, allowing for more adventures with “Shell-head” and giving the cast and crew more opportunity to take advantage of the characters' rich history.
Article comments